When she was in fifth grade, Melanie Faye got her first guitar. It didn’t have any strings.

Actually, it was a guitar-shaped controller for the video game “Guitar Hero.” And even though the only sound it made came from the clicking of multi-colored buttons, something about it felt undeniably natural in her hands.

“That made me want to start playing guitar,” she said.

Within a year, she’d traded a plastic instrument for the real thing.

Today, Faye is 20, and has quickly become one of Nashville's most influential young guitarists. Instead of “Guitar Hero,” she’s used another 21st century tool: Instagram.

About two years ago, Faye started posting videos of her playing guitar to the social network. She’d sit cross-legged on her bedroom floor, prop up her phone in front of her and play 60 seconds of a cover or original composition.

The setup was humble, but the music itself was often stunning. Faye’s jazz-informed, melodically intricate pieces were delivered with surgical precision – and more than a little confidence.

“I really believed that I was going to go viral,” she said. “I thought that was going to happen. And then when it did, it just put things in perspective.”

It took about a year for her to get noticed, but when it happened, it happened in a big way. Last summer, an admirer posted one of Faye’s videos to Twitter, writing, "I think this is the prettiest thing I've heard in a minute."

it took off immediately, and has since been viewed 4 million times.

Fellow teenagers were spellbound, and so were some of Faye's musical heroes, including SZA and Chance The Rapper.

Beyonce’s former guitarist met with her in Nashville to take a guitar lesson. Shawn Mendes chipped in on some home recording equipment. Acclaimed rapper Noname invited her to open for her in Chicago.

Faye has since made three trips to New York City for studio sessions, and recently spent a week in Los Angeles recording with Willow Smith (daughter of Will Smith) and indie-rock titan Mac DeMarco, among others.

But at home in Nashville, Faye remains anonymous. If she’s not holed up in her room, she’s skateboarding solo at one of the area’s skate parks.

“I feel like I have no touch with the Nashville music scene,” Faye said. “Nobody from Nashville has reached out. It's only everywhere else.”

'I definitely didn't fit in'

Still, Music City has been a crucial piece of her artistic upbringing. Faye was born in Huntsville, Ala., but moved to Nashville when she was 3 years old. She’s not from a family of musicians: Both her mother and father are chemists who met in college.

For high school, she attended Nashville School of the Arts and focused on guitar. She thinks it prepared her for the music industry in a couple of key ways. For one thing, the jazzy chords she’s entrancing her new audience with are the same ones she learned from the school’s Guitar Studies director, Dr. James Satterwhite.

The other way it prepared her was less positive — Faye says she felt like “the underdog” in a very competitive town.

“I didn't really feel a sense of community," she said. "I definitely was very by myself...The guitar program is all boys. And they're all white, so I definitely didn't fit in with anyone there."

But on social media, Faye has stood out as an inspirational figure.

"Some (followers) are like, 'Wow, this inspired me to pick up a guitar.' Or they're like, 'Wow, I want to be just like you when I grow up."

Faye laughs. "If I'm even a grown-up."

She's also opening eyes to the versatility of the instrument. Yes, she covered Little Wing by Jimi Hendrix (a poster of whom adorns Faye's bedroom wall), but she's also applied her style to Mariah Carey's "My All" and "Waste" by rap group Brockhampton.

"When you think of guitar, you just think of '70s & '80s rock, or metal, or something. A lot of people like me don't actually identify with that type of music. So they don't really want to play guitar, because they don't know you can play R&B on a guitar. I obsessed over Mariah Carey. I don't think people understand how influenced I am by her, and how she's even influenced my guitar playing."

Earlier this year, Faye found a kindred spirit in Nashville: Regi Wooten, founder of funk family band The Wooten Brothers. After some fellow Nashvillians saw Faye at the NAMM trade show in Anaheim, California, they took her over to Wooten's house, where they jammed on her songs late into the night.

"She was super," Wooten recalls.

"A girl playing like that is much needed. I was telling her to stick with it."

'I'm just going to make this happen'

That's certainly the plan. Faye was a year and a half into her studies at MTSU, but opted to put college on hold this year.

"I felt like I was half-heartedly doing school and half-heartedly doing music," she said. "Then when that viral video happened, it just was like, 'You know what? I'm just going to make this happen."

There's some studio work out of town on the horizon, and Faye still needs to add vocals to the instrumental tune she and DeMarco put up on YouTube last month (with nearly a quarter-million views to date).

She's also focused on finally putting out some music of her own, when she finishes her debut EP, "HomoPhone." A few Instagram clips have revealed Faye has serious potential as a singer and songwriter.

"Now I'm falling through the cracks," she sings in one video, over cascading guitar chords. "Of a never-ending pavement drenched in black, black, black."

Fans in the comment section have been pleading for a full version for months. Their encouragement — and their critiques — are a constant in Faye's life. When she was in the studio with Willow Smith, she streamed video of their session live, and viewers tried to offer their input on the track.

The musical mentors and heroes she's met over the last year have a range of opinions on what path she should take next, too.

"I guess you just have to believe in yourself, honestly," Faye said.

"I have this friend, and her next door neighbor was over for dinner, and he just said, 'Never listen to stupid people, and just go with your intuition.' And that really stands out to me. It's really just that simple."

Contact Dave Paulson at dnpaulson@tennessean.com or on Twitter at @ItsDavePaulson